POLL: How do you rate Paul McCartney's "Driving Rain" album?

I would rather listen to paint drying.

 

I avoided it for years, based on all the negative comments. When I finally bought it, I was pleasantly surprised. Not his best but not bad at all.

 

I found an answer to the first question:
Your Loving Flame was done in June 2001, after the regular bunch of sessions in February/March 2001:

http://www.jpgr.co.uk/p5355102.html

Arnie

 

Was Kahne the producer, or was it self-produced?

 

Pretty sure it was Kahne.

 

The other one being "Freedom", recorded live at the MSG with overdubs at Quad Studios the day after the concert.

 

Kahne.

 

First option.
Last of the old school ballad song -writing technique.The album cover in the other hand was surely taking the proverbial pis.

 

I object to the phrase "the usual throwaways" because I don't find Paul's solo catalog as weak as you.
But "Driving Rain" is, in my opinion, his worst album of the last 20 years.

 

It's an album I found great/awful.

Lonely Road - top notch rocker... great!
From a Lover to a Friend... ewww... such a lame song in pretty much every way.
She's Given Up Talking - great! Oh wait... awful. Oh wait... great. Uh... both!
Driving Rain - 1-2-3-4-5 let's go for a drive. What? That lyric hurts it. But cool song anyway
I Do - fantastic!
Tiny Bubble - I think I like this... uh... maybe I don't? Confused feelings!
Magic - dig
Your Way - ok
Spinning on an Axis - forgettable.
About You - NICE!
Heather - NICER!
Back in the Sunshine Again - interesting
Your Loving Flame - hideous!
Riding into Jaipur - uh... strange.
Rinse the Raindrops - WOW! Great jam. Interesting and exciting all at the same time.
Freedom - Worst Paul song ever!

 

Fair enough criticism. I wanted to come up with a "scale" for Paul's albums that wasn't the typical 1-star to 5-star approach, and I tried to write accordingly. Don't really want to alter the choices mid-stream, tho, as I hope it will be interesting to see how folks rate his various albums using the same scale. The whole thing was "inspired" by some genuine McCartney fans saying how dire they thought "New" was - an album I thought was generally pretty well-received. So I wrote the lower two comment tiers for them and tried to work "up" from that. A common criticism of Paul's (and the other Fabs) post-1970 work is that he has too many throwaway tracks, so I put that comment in sort of the "C"-grade...

I hope you - and others who may object to the "scale" - will keep voting in future polls, despite this.

If I think of Paul's entire solo/Wings catalog, I can see myself putting albums in each of the five categories above, and I hope many others here feel similarly. Again, apologies to those who don't think I quite nailed the categories...

 

The least favorite out of my personal list of lower-tier Macca. Other titles in that category include: Wild Life, Off the Ground, and Electric Arguments.

 

I always thought Vanilla Sky was done during the main sessions for the album and left off it so it could be released on the movie soundtrack.

 

I voted "A pretty solid effort - worth recommending ", but was tempted to go higher. I champion it as one of his most underrated/overlooked/misunderstood very good (or better) efforts- along with "Off The Ground", "Electric Arguments" (critical raves, but low sales), & "Back To The Egg" (which doesn't need me to champion it as much now it seems)...and maybe "Red Rose Speedway" too (at the tail end of my list of his better efforts, so I'm least enthusiastic about crowing about it compared to these other ones).
"Driving Rain" suffers mostly from being the album that was released after "Flaming Pie" & "Chaos & Creation In The Backyard" (not to mention the mostly covers, with a few great originals, project "Run Devil Run"), but it is a very good album, at least, with plenty of great moments on it.
I really love it's sprawling "White Album" type of nature, but I think I prefer it as a front loaded, CD-R. I put the songs I care for the least at the very end. I think that there's just so much here, that it might feel a bit long, or confused/cluttered to many folks- and there's so much, & it's so eclectic that many are likely to find things they care for less that upset the flow for them- that's not so much the case for me.
In the final tally it lies just outside my top ten Macca solo albums, & on some days might be as high as #11, &, as I previously stated, it's up in the top 3-4 albums that I champion as his most underrated.

Here's how it sits for me...these appear in tiers, but within each level they proceed in chronological order...

Level I:
Band On The Run
Flaming Pie
Chaos & Creation In The Backyard
New

Level Ia:
Ram
Back To The Egg
Tug Of War
Off The Ground
Electric Arguments
Memory Almost Full

Level II:
Venus & Mars
Flowers In The Dirt
**DRIVING RAIN**

Level IIa:
McCartney
Red Rose Speedway

 

The least favorite out of my personal list of lower-tier Macca. Other titles in that category include: Wild Life, Off the Ground, and Electric Arguments. I can't think of a single track on it I want to play more than a handful of times...perhaps Lonely Road.

 

Exactly my feeling. A little editing and I think this would generally be considered a great album.

 

A pretty good album

 

I forget about the of or have rule... but the one thing that helped me is the song I Should Have Known Better.
Now if I could only remember the who or whom rule.

 

I just think of it as a traditional double album. The same thing goes for Springsteen's The Rising. The average, good, and great tracks add to the album, and nothing subtracts.

 

I like "Lonely Road", love "Your Loving Flame" (which is why it was the only song from this album to make my pool of potential tracks for a comp I posted a while back) but "Freedom" is the worst thing Macca's ever written ("We All Stand Together" and "Tropic Island Hum" don't count since they were intended for kids) and the rest is meh.

Definitely Macca's worst album.

 

McCartney scholars agree that Freedom is a bonus track and not a part of the proper album thankfully. So I don't hold Freedom against Driving Rain.

 

Went with not bad/not great. I too played this one a ton when it came out. But I have to admit I rarely play it now when I'm in a late career Macca listening phase. Idk, it is a bit long. However there are some excellent trademark McCartney tunes on this: Your Loving Flame, Heather, I Do, Your Way.

Some really great examples of a rocking Macca: About You, Back In The Sunshine Again, Lonely Road.

The rest of the album is kind of middle of the road IMO. Although my sister who was 11 at that time loved 'She's Given Up Talking', which I found strange but cool.

 

The first four songs on the album are putrid.
About half of the remaining 12 songs are ok.
Way too long.
He started to regain his chops after this one. In fact i think each album after this (counting Electric Arguments but not counting Kisses on the Bottom) has improved in quality.

 

It's a pretty good album. Definitely a step down in quality after Flaming Pie. But as said by many before me...it's biggest crime is being too long. There are some really fine moments on this album though.

I had pretty high hopes after my brother, Ferrante suggested it was the finest album in the history of music. It's pretty good...just not the best album ever recorded.

 

Lot of unfinished songs. Lousy lyrics (1,2,3,4,5...Let's go for a drive). Didn't think much of the production by David Kahne. Couple of nice songs but on the whole FORGETABLE.